israeli navy fires on Gaza aid flotilla

[nageov3t]

By a mile, Israel's horrible miscalculation is the leading headline worldwide. Google News has almost 7500 articles across the web, news and editorial, covering all aspects of the raid and the aftermath. A quick scan shows that over 90% paint Israel in a bad light, if not more.

The aid flotilla wanted to bring this Gaza blockade to the headlines, and they've accomplished that in spades.

what has Israel ever done that left you with the impression that they devote a significant amount of their time to caring about international opinion?

 

[theeedude]

what has Israel ever done that left you with the impression that they devote a significant amount of their time to caring about international opinion?

I dunno, maybe their ambassador spinning this on PBS?

 

[flavio]

The article makes it sound like Israel randomly sends soldiers into Gaza with the express intent of killing civilians, which is ludicrous.

Maybe not the "express intent" but they do routinely kill civilians. Shoot at farmers and generally have a disregard for the lives of Palestinians.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQXecLyureE

http://www.haaretz.com/news/idf-soldier-shoots-bound-palestinian-at-short-range-1.250079

http://ingaza.wordpress.com/2009/02...alestinian-farmer-4th-farmer-shot-in-3-weeks/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/20/gaza-israel

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...-shooting-dead-civilians-during-Gaza-war.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...hooting-of-palestinian-civilians-1956186.html

There's no shortage of examples.

the deaths mentioned in the article are a result of retaliatory strikes by the IDF in response to Hamas' rocket launches or armed incursions into Israel

The rocket launches are a retaliatory strike in response to IDF shootings and armed incursions into Palestine.

The vast majority of the claims in this blog post about the deliberate shootings have been debunked.

No, they haven't.

In particular, the alleged unarmed shooting of a Palestinian woman was proven false:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/28/world/middleeast/28israel.html?_r=3&hp

Your article does not prove anything false. It has some Israelis denying things. That is not even close to proof.

However, to claim that the vast majority of Israel soldiers are monsters who indiscriminately murdered civilians is an outright fabrication.

That's not what I said.

 

[JEDIYoda]

Maybe not the "express intent" but they do routinely kill civilians. Shoot at farmers and generally have a disregard for the lives of Palestinians.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQXecLyureE

http://www.haaretz.com/news/idf-soldier-shoots-bound-palestinian-at-short-range-1.250079

http://ingaza.wordpress.com/2009/02...alestinian-farmer-4th-farmer-shot-in-3-weeks/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/20/gaza-israel

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...-shooting-dead-civilians-during-Gaza-war.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...hooting-of-palestinian-civilians-1956186.html

There's no shortage of examples.



No, they haven't.



Your article does not prove anything false. It has some Israelis denying things. That is not even close to proof.



That's not what I said.

What is fascinating is nobody actually knows what really happenned. Sure you have links to what?? Nothing that is factual.....
YES!! The post about the deliberate shootings have been debunked.

The real issue is you keep posting these links that are based on heresay and inuendo.....go figure!!!

 

[Zebo]

By a mile, Israel's horrible miscalculation is the leading headline worldwide. Google News has almost 7500 articles across the web, news and editorial, covering all aspects of the raid and the aftermath. A quick scan shows that over 90% paint Israel in a bad light, if not more.

The aid flotilla wanted to bring this Gaza blockade to the headlines, and they've accomplished that in spades.

And blockade will continue. Palestinans are fools because every stunt yields life worse for them from what I've witnessed over the years. I sure more heat will come down upon them as a result of this stunt as well.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37442104/ns/world_news-mideastn_africa/

 

[Danube]

What is fascinating is nobody actually knows what really happenned. Sure you have links to what?? Nothing that is factual.....
YES!! The post about the deliberate shootings have been debunked.

The real issue is you keep posting these links that are based on heresay and inuendo.....go figure!!!

Actually its pretty easy to tell what happened. A boat full of vermin intentionally tried to run a blockade and a PC IDF tried dropping on boat with PC values as Job #1 and got clock cleaned.

 

[jpeyton]

The best analysis yet of the incident:

http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/2010...readmore&elq=ec0dbb5abd264ff39b3645c5d73e93b4

By George Friedman

On Sunday, Israeli naval forces intercepted the ships of a Turkish nongovernmental organization (NGO) delivering humanitarian supplies to Gaza. Israel had demanded that the vessels not go directly to Gaza but instead dock in Israeli ports, where the supplies would be offloaded and delivered to Gaza. The Turkish NGO refused, insisting on going directly to Gaza. Gunfire ensued when Israeli naval personnel boarded one of the vessels, and a significant number of the passengers and crew on the ship were killed or wounded.

Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon charged that the mission was simply an attempt to provoke the Israelis. That was certainly the case. The mission was designed to demonstrate that the Israelis were unreasonable and brutal. The hope was that Israel would be provoked to extreme action, further alienating Israel from the global community and possibly driving a wedge between Israel and the United States. The operation’s planners also hoped this would trigger a political crisis in Israel.

A logical Israeli response would have been avoiding falling into the provocation trap and suffering the political repercussions the Turkish NGO was trying to trigger. Instead, the Israelis decided to make a show of force. The Israelis appear to have reasoned that backing down would demonstrate weakness and encourage further flotillas to Gaza, unraveling the Israeli position vis-à-vis Hamas. In this thinking, a violent interception was a superior strategy to accommodation regardless of political consequences. Thus, the Israelis accepted the bait and were provoked.

The ‘Exodus’ Scenario

In the 1950s, an author named Leon Uris published a book called “Exodus.” Later made into a major motion picture, Exodus told the story of a Zionist provocation against the British. In the wake of World War II, the British — who controlled Palestine, as it was then known — maintained limits on Jewish immigration there. Would-be immigrants captured trying to run the blockade were detained in camps in Cyprus. In the book and movie, Zionists planned a propaganda exercise involving a breakout of Jews — mostly children — from the camp, who would then board a ship renamed the Exodus. When the Royal Navy intercepted the ship, the passengers would mount a hunger strike. The goal was to portray the British as brutes finishing the work of the Nazis. The image of children potentially dying of hunger would force the British to permit the ship to go to Palestine, to reconsider British policy on immigration, and ultimately to decide to abandon Palestine and turn the matter over to the United Nations.

There was in fact a ship called Exodus, but the affair did not play out precisely as portrayed by Uris, who used an amalgam of incidents to display the propaganda war waged by the Jews. Those carrying out this war had two goals. The first was to create sympathy in Britain and throughout the world for Jews who, just a couple of years after German concentration camps, were now being held in British camps. Second, they sought to portray their struggle as being against the British. The British were portrayed as continuing Nazi policies toward the Jews in order to maintain their empire. The Jews were portrayed as anti-imperialists, fighting the British much as the Americans had.

It was a brilliant strategy. By focusing on Jewish victimhood and on the British, the Zionists defined the battle as being against the British, with the Arabs playing the role of people trying to create the second phase of the Holocaust. The British were portrayed as pro-Arab for economic and imperial reasons, indifferent at best to the survivors of the Holocaust. Rather than restraining the Arabs, the British were arming them. The goal was not to vilify the Arabs but to villify the British, and to position the Jews with other nationalist groups whether in India or Egypt rising against the British.

The precise truth or falsehood of this portrayal didn’t particularly matter. For most of the world, the Palestine issue was poorly understood and not a matter of immediate concern. The Zionists intended to shape the perceptions of a global public with limited interest in or understanding of the issues, filling in the blanks with their own narrative. And they succeeded.

The success was rooted in a political reality. Where knowledge is limited, and the desire to learn the complex reality doesn’t exist, public opinion can be shaped by whoever generates the most powerful symbols. And on a matter of only tangential interest, governments tend to follow their publics’ wishes, however they originate. There is little to be gained for governments in resisting public opinion and much to be gained by giving in. By shaping the battlefield of public perception, it is thus possible to get governments to change positions.

In this way, the Zionists’ ability to shape global public perceptions of what was happening in Palestine — to demonize the British and turn the question of Palestine into a Jewish-British issue — shaped the political decisions of a range of governments. It was not the truth or falsehood of the narrative that mattered. What mattered was the ability to identify the victim and victimizer such that global opinion caused both London and governments not directly involved in the issue to adopt political stances advantageous to the Zionists. It is in this context that we need to view the Turkish flotilla.

The Turkish Flotilla to Gaza

The Palestinians have long argued that they are the victims of Israel, an invention of British and American imperialism. Since 1967, they have focused not so much on the existence of the state of Israel (at least in messages geared toward the West) as on the oppression of Palestinians in the occupied territories. Since the split between Hamas and Fatah and the Gaza War, the focus has been on the plight of the citizens of Gaza, who have been portrayed as the dispossessed victims of Israeli violence.

The bid to shape global perceptions by portraying the Palestinians as victims of Israel was the first prong of a longtime two-part campaign. The second part of this campaign involved armed resistance against the Israelis. The way this resistance was carried out, from airplane hijackings to stone-throwing children to suicide bombers, interfered with the first part of the campaign, however. The Israelis could point to suicide bombings or the use of children against soldiers as symbols of Palestinian inhumanity. This in turn was used to justify conditions in Gaza. While the Palestinians had made significant inroads in placing Israel on the defensive in global public opinion, they thus consistently gave the Israelis the opportunity to turn the tables. And this is where the flotilla comes in.

The Turkish flotilla aimed to replicate the Exodus story or, more precisely, to define the global image of Israel in the same way the Zionists defined the image that they wanted to project. As with the Zionist portrayal of the situation in 1947, the Gaza situation is far more complicated than as portrayed by the Palestinians. The moral question is also far more ambiguous. But as in 1947, when the Zionist portrayal was not intended to be a scholarly analysis of the situation but a political weapon designed to define perceptions, the Turkish flotilla was not designed to carry out a moral inquest.

Instead, the flotilla was designed to achieve two ends. The first is to divide Israel and Western governments by shifting public opinion against Israel. The second is to create a political crisis inside Israel between those who feel that Israel’s increasing isolation over the Gaza issue is dangerous versus those who think any weakening of resolve is dangerous.

The Geopolitical Fallout for Israel

It is vital that the Israelis succeed in portraying the flotilla as an extremist plot. Whether extremist or not, the plot has generated an image of Israel quite damaging to Israeli political interests. Israel is increasingly isolated internationally, with heavy pressure on its relationship with Europe and the United States.

In all of these countries, politicians are extremely sensitive to public opinion. It is difficult to imagine circumstances under which public opinion will see Israel as the victim. The general response in the Western public is likely to be that the Israelis probably should have allowed the ships to go to Gaza and offload rather than to precipitate bloodshed. Israel’s enemies will fan these flames by arguing that the Israelis prefer bloodshed to reasonable accommodation. And as Western public opinion shifts against Israel, Western political leaders will track with this shift.

The incident also wrecks Israeli relations with Turkey, historically an Israeli ally in the Muslim world with longstanding military cooperation with Israel. The Turkish government undoubtedly has wanted to move away from this relationship, but it faced resistance within the Turkish military and among secularists. The new Israeli action makes a break with Israel easy, and indeed almost necessary for Ankara.

With roughly the population of Houston, Texas, Israel is just not large enough to withstand extended isolation, meaning this event has profound geopolitical implications.

Public opinion matters where issues are not of fundamental interest to a nation. Israel is not a fundamental interest to other nations. The ability to generate public antipathy to Israel can therefore reshape Israeli relations with countries critical to Israel. For example, a redefinition of U.S.-Israeli relations will have much less effect on the United States than on Israel. The Obama administration, already irritated by the Israelis, might now see a shift in U.S. public opinion that will open the way to a new U.S.-Israeli relationship disadvantageous to Israel.

The Israelis will argue that this is all unfair, as they were provoked. Like the British, they seem to think that the issue is whose logic is correct. But the issue actually is, whose logic will be heard? As with a tank battle or an airstrike, this sort of warfare has nothing to do with fairness. It has to do with controlling public perception and using that public perception to shape foreign policy around the world. In this case, the issue will be whether the deaths were necessary. The Israeli argument of provocation will have limited traction.

Internationally, there is little doubt that the incident will generate a firestorm. Certainly, Turkey will break cooperation with Israel. Opinion in Europe will likely harden. And public opinion in the United States — by far the most important in the equation — might shift to a “plague-on-both-your-houses” position.

While the international reaction is predictable, the interesting question is whether this evolution will cause a political crisis in Israel. Those in Israel who feel that international isolation is preferable to accommodation with the Palestinians are in control now. Many in the opposition see Israel’s isolation as a strategic threat. Economically and militarily, they argue, Israel cannot survive in isolation. The current regime will respond that there will be no isolation. The flotilla aimed to generate what the government has said would not happen.

The tougher Israel is, the more the flotilla’s narrative takes hold. As the Zionists knew in 1947 and the Palestinians are learning, controlling public opinion requires subtlety, a selective narrative and cynicism. As they also knew, losing the battle can be catastrophic. It cost Britain the Mandate and allowed Israel to survive. Israel’s enemies are now turning the tables. This maneuver was far more effective than suicide bombings or the Intifada in challenging Israel’s public perception and therefore its geopolitical position (though if the Palestinians return to some of their more distasteful tactics like suicide bombing, the Turkish strategy of portraying Israel as the instigator of violence will be undermined).

Israel is now in uncharted waters. It does not know how to respond. It is not clear that the Palestinians know how to take full advantage of the situation, either. But even so, this places the battle on a new field, far more fluid and uncontrollable than what went before. The next steps will involve calls for sanctions against Israel. The Israeli threats against Iran will be seen in a different context, and Israeli portrayal of Iran will hold less sway over the world.

And this will cause a political crisis in Israel. If this government survives, then Israel is locked into a course that gives it freedom of action but international isolation. If the government falls, then Israel enters a period of domestic uncertainty. In either case, the flotilla achieved its strategic mission. It got Israel to take violent action against it. In doing so, Israel ran into its own fist.

 

[flavio]

What is fascinating is nobody actually knows what really happenned. Sure you have links to what?? Nothing that is factual.....

There is much that is factual in those links and there's no shortage of evidence. The problem is Israel apologists can not ever admit that Israelis are capable of doing anything wrong no matter how much evidence there is.

YES!! The post about the deliberate shootings have been debunked.

No.

 

[flavio]

Actually its pretty easy to tell what happened. A boat full of vermin intentionally tried to run a blockade and a PC IDF tried dropping on boat with PC values as Job #1 and got clock cleaned.

It is easy to tell. A boat full of humanitarians got attacked by a helicopter full of vermin who were part of an illegal blockade that confiscates food and other basic supplies headed towards starving people.

 

[flavio]

And blockade will continue. Palestinans are fools because every stunt yields life worse for them from what I've witnessed over the years. I sure more heat will come down upon them as a result of this stunt as well.

So you were under the impression this was a Palestinian ship? LOL.

 

[flavio]

The best analysis yet of the incident:

http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/2010...readmore&elq=ec0dbb5abd264ff39b3645c5d73e93b4

It's a fairly interesting article too bad all the links in it require me to give an email address.

The Exodus comparison is nice.

 

[DucatiMonster696]

There is much that is factual in those links and there's no shortage of evidence. The problem is Israel apologists can not ever admit that Israelis are capable of doing anything wrong no matter how much evidence there is.



No.

So what did the Israeli's do that was against the "law" when dealing with ship which had intentionally tried to break blockade and which the occupants began attacking Israeli naval personal as they boarded the ship in a lawful manner?

Don't give me the BS line that it was a "aide" ship because if they really were intent on providing "aide" they would of gone through the right channels politically and legally just as other organizations do in the area.

Oh and this ain't over because apparently these morons at the "Free Gaza" group are going to try this again with 2 more ships.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/05/29/international/i032944D69.DTL

 

[Perknose]

It's a fairly interesting article too bad all the links in it require me to give an email address.

The Exodus comparison is nice.

Ahem. 😉

 

[flavio]

So what did the Israeli's do that was against the "law" when dealing with ship which had intentionally tried to break blockade and which the occupants began attacking Israeli naval personal as they boarded the ship in a lawful manner?

Israel attacked a humanitarian ship in international waters that was breaking no law. Their blockade is illegal and is starving the Palestinians.

Don't give me the BS line that it was a "aide" ship because if they really were intent on providing "aide" they would of gone through the right channels politically and legally just as other organizations do in the area.

No, the right channel is taking the aide to the people that need it. Fuck letting Israel steal their chocolate, seeds, and fishing poles.

Oh and this ain't over because apparently these morons at the "Free Gaza" group are going to try this again with 2 more ships.

Good for them, let these morons in Israel try and steal some more aid.

 

[flavio]

Ahem. 😉

Well done sir.

 

[Perknose]

Well done sir.

Thanks, but I have to say that my view of those aboard the ship involved in the fighting, those who greeted the Israelis with crowbars and poles and went about attacking them, has changed.

They were decidedly not pacifist peace activists.

What were they thinking? All right or wrong aside, they couldn't hope to win that battle. But they may yet win the public opinion war, just as the illegal jewish immigrants on the Exodus did against the British in 1947.

And the Israels stupidly and eagerly played right into their plan.

To re-quote that article:

The Geopolitical Fallout for Israel

It is vital that the Israelis succeed in portraying the flotilla as an extremist plot. Whether extremist or not, the plot has generated an image of Israel quite damaging to Israeli political interests. Israel is increasingly isolated internationally, with heavy pressure on its relationship with Europe and the United States.



In all of these countries, politicians are extremely sensitive to public opinion. It is difficult to imagine circumstances under which public opinion will see Israel as the victim. The general response in the Western public is likely to be that the Israelis probably should have allowed the ships to go to Gaza and offload rather than to precipitate bloodshed. Israel’s enemies will fan these flames by arguing that the Israelis prefer bloodshed to reasonable accommodation. And as Western public opinion shifts against Israel, Western political leaders will track with this shift.



The incident also wrecks Israeli relations with Turkey, historically an Israeli ally in the Muslim world with longstanding military cooperation with Israel. The Turkish government undoubtedly has wanted to move away from this relationship, but it faced resistance within the Turkish military and among secularists. The new Israeli action makes a break with Israel easy, and indeed almost necessary for Ankara.


With roughly the population of Houston, Texas, Israel is just not large enough to withstand extended isolation, meaning this event has profound geopolitical implications.



Public opinion matters where issues are not of fundamental interest to a nation. Israel is not a fundamental interest to other nations. The ability to generate public antipathy to Israel can therefore reshape Israeli relations with countries critical to Israel. For example, a redefinition of U.S.-Israeli relations will have much less effect on the United States than on Israel. The Obama administration, already irritated by the Israelis, might now see a shift in U.S. public opinion that will open the way to a new U.S.-Israeli relationship disadvantageous to Israel.


The Israelis will argue that this is all unfair, as they were provoked. Like the British, they seem to think that the issue is whose logic is correct. But the issue actually is, whose logic will be heard? As with a tank battle or an airstrike, this sort of warfare has nothing to do with fairness. It has to do with controlling public perception and using that public perception to shape foreign policy around the world. In this case, the issue will be whether the deaths were necessary. The Israeli argument of provocation will have limited traction.

Strategic thinking trumps short-range tactical thinking every time. You can win a battle but it can still cause you to lose the "war."

 

[SamurAchzar]

Israel attacked a humanitarian ship in international waters that was breaking no law. Their blockade is illegal and is starving the Palestinians.

How is it illegal? Because your hippie Berkley professor said so in one of his lectures, or did you hear that from Chomsky himself?

I like how you can find a common denominator with Hamas guys. You, the protector of freedom and human rights, and one of the most religious anti-freedom ruling parties around. Nice that you represent them.

Anyway, whether the blockade is legal or not is a moot point, it is a necessity for Israel's protection. Palestinians are unable to establish a peaceful and effective local government. Israel withdrawn from Gaza but it can not allow them to create a 2nd Hizballah. In the big picture, leaving the Palestinians unable to fight saves lives from both sides (mostly Palestinians).

I'd be delighted to see the Palestinians establish their own country, but lets be realistic, it's not going to be any different than Taliban-era Afghanistan, and as they offer no sound path to ending the conflict with Israel, I don't think it'll happen anytime soon.

 

[DaFinn]

Wow,

everywhere around the web people are very eager to judge Israel. And call this inspection of ships an "attack".

Lets see few facts.

Organizers of this flotilla (IHH) have ties to Hamas and other terrorist organizations. Proven, and under inspection by several countries including US.

IHH aid ships have tried to ship weapons to gaza also before, disguised as aid shipments. -> Israel had every right to suspect that now too.

According to international agreements, it is ok to search a ship on international waters, if its trying to breach a blockaded area and there is suspicion that it is carrying illegal cargo. This is what happened here.

There were several aid ships, on other ships the "peace" activists did not oppose IDF forces, and there were no casualties.

On board Mavi Marmara (the lead ship), IDF confiscated gas masks, knives, axes, firebombs, detonators... Clear indication, that this incident/resistance was planned well ahead. Clearly just to get more media, and bad will to Israel.

On Mavi Marmara, the IDF soldiers were attacked with poles, knives, fire arms, stun grenade and firebombs. How peace full is that?

ATTENTION: Soldiers who boarded the ships first, had PAINTBALL weapons to avoid casualties. Only after they were attacked by the activists, and got severely beaten, they requested permission to use their side arms. Paintball guns are clearly visible on several videos.

I am sorry for lives lost, but to me this seems clearly planned well ahead. If IDF had boarded ships with no resistance, and guided them to Israeli harbor, media attention would be very small. But with a good confrontation and lives lost, media attention is huge, and bad will to Israel quaranteed. Seems most people have made up their minds before any facts are released.

IMO the people responsible for the lives lost, are the organizers of the flotilla. They should not have let extremists on board. As we saw with other ships, there was no problems. It seems clear, that these people were let on board intentionally to organize this kind of confrontation. Therefore the organizers are to blame here.

For the record, I'm not Israeli and not taking sides here. Just a little stunned and annoyed by how media handled this from the get go...

 

[grebe925]

Apologies if this is a repost, but it looks like the Turkish faux-peacniks were actually thugs in Gandhi's clothing.

How the flotilla bound for Gaza Strip sailed into death at sea

In particular:

The Gaza fleet’s co-ordinators had said their colleagues on the five other ships had been schooled in non-violent resistance, including linking arms round the ships’ wheelhouses, locking engine rooms and filming the Israeli forces. “The passengers were waving white flags, not clubs,” the Free Gaza group said in a statement later.

However, some of the hundreds of passengers on the Mavi Marmara had other ideas. As the Israeli Navy Seals rappelled, one by one, on to the upper deck of the ship, it was no longer clear exactly who was ambushing whom.

“They beat us with metal sticks and knives,” said one of the Israeli commandos, who hit the deck only to find a mob of furious demonstrators, rather than political protesters, armed with iron bars, baseball bats, knives, petrol bombs and stun grenades. An Israeli military night-vision video released after the chaotic storming showed the first soldier being overwhelmed as he landed, then pitched on to a lower deck by the crowd.

Still the Israeli soldiers kept coming, in a single vertical line, to be set upon. Video footage from the activists showed stunned soldiers being pummelled, one of them reeling for cover from the blows in a hatchway.

Meanwhile, other commandos were trying to scale the ship’s sides, but were having their hands beaten by activists determined to repel the boarders. According to the army, it was a “lynching,” with the passengers trying to break the soldiers’ arms and legs and beating them about the head.

Overwhelmed, some of the elite forces started losing their sidearms to the crowd. Others had their helmets and body armour pulled off them as they were hurled from deck to deck. Some of the Israeli soldiers had to dive into the sea to save themselves.

“They jumped me, hit me with clubs and bottles and stole my rifle,” one commando said. “I pulled out my pistol and had no choice but to shoot.”

An Israeli journalist on the missile boats said that the soldiers had been carrying anti-riot paintball guns to disperse the crowd, as well as pistols. These appeared to have little effect and the order was eventually given to resort to live rounds.

“There was live fire at some point against us,” a commando said. That was when the gunfire erupted at terrifyingly close quarters. When it was over, two hours into the operation, at least nine passengers were dead, dozens more were wounded and Israel stood in the glare of international condemnation as rioters tried to storm its consulate in Istanbul and its ambassadors across Europe were summoned to explain themselves.

 

[The Green Bean]

I have said it before and I'll say it again: Israel should be wiped of the map.

 

[HappyPuppy]

I sincerely hope that if that ever happens again, and it most likely wil, Israel just sinks all the boats/ships from ten miles away.

Screw them.

 

[flavio]

How is it illegal? Because your hippie Berkley professor said so in one of his lectures, or did you hear that from Chomsky himself?

I wish i had gone to Berkeley. Good school. Probably would get paid more now.

Anyway..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007–2010_blockade_of_the_Gaza_Strip#Legal_arguments

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,539363,00.html

I like how you can find a common denominator with Hamas guys. You, the protector of freedom and human rights, and one of the most religious anti-freedom ruling parties around. Nice that you represent them.

Sorry, not representing Hamas. Failure of debate there for you.

Anyway, whether the blockade is legal or not is a moot point, it is a necessity for Israel's protection.

Nope, illegal and the removal of the blockade is necessary for the Palestinians protection. The blockade is just a way to starve them.

Palestinians are unable to establish a peaceful and effective local government.

As is Israel.

 

[flavio]

Thanks, but I have to say that my view of those aboard the ship involved in the fighting, those who greeted the Israelis with crowbars and poles and went about attacking them, has changed.

They were decidedly not pacifist peace activists.

Wrong, many of them at least were peace activists. That doesn't matter though. Defending your ship from an attacking force trying to lower armed forces from a helicopter in international waters in the night when you've done nothing illegal is completely understandable.

I can't believe many here act like that is acceptable protocol. Israelis did something incredibly stupid.

 

[HappyPuppy]

Israel kicks ass! It's too bad there aren't as many supporting them as support North Korea. Of course North Korea is innocent of doing anything provocative.

 

[theflyingpig]

Wow,

everywhere around the web people are very eager to judge Israel. And call this inspection of ships an "attack".

Lets see few facts.

Organizers of this flotilla (IHH) have ties to Hamas and other terrorist organizations. Proven, and under inspection by several countries including US.

IHH aid ships have tried to ship weapons to gaza also before, disguised as aid shipments. -> Israel had every right to suspect that now too.

According to international agreements, it is ok to search a ship on international waters, if its trying to breach a blockaded area and there is suspicion that it is carrying illegal cargo. This is what happened here.

There were several aid ships, on other ships the "peace" activists did not oppose IDF forces, and there were no casualties.

On board Mavi Marmara (the lead ship), IDF confiscated gas masks, knives, axes, firebombs, detonators... Clear indication, that this incident/resistance was planned well ahead. Clearly just to get more media, and bad will to Israel.

On Mavi Marmara, the IDF soldiers were attacked with poles, knives, fire arms, stun grenade and firebombs. How peace full is that?

ATTENTION: Soldiers who boarded the ships first, had PAINTBALL weapons to avoid casualties. Only after they were attacked by the activists, and got severely beaten, they requested permission to use their side arms. Paintball guns are clearly visible on several videos.

I am sorry for lives lost, but to me this seems clearly planned well ahead. If IDF had boarded ships with no resistance, and guided them to Israeli harbor, media attention would be very small. But with a good confrontation and lives lost, media attention is huge, and bad will to Israel quaranteed. Seems most people have made up their minds before any facts are released.

IMO the people responsible for the lives lost, are the organizers of the flotilla. They should not have let extremists on board. As we saw with other ships, there was no problems. It seems clear, that these people were let on board intentionally to organize this kind of confrontation. Therefore the organizers are to blame here.

For the record, I'm not Israeli and not taking sides here. Just a little stunned and annoyed by how media handled this from the get go...

Facts aren't good enough for liberal fools. All they want is the destruction of Israel at all costs. That is why they take every opportunity to condemn Israel and commend terrorists. They will twist and distort the truth to fit their agenda, and if they can't they will simply ignore it. Everyone knows this.